15 Universities teams to compete in fluid power vehicle challenge

Milwaukee, Wisconsin – The 2018-19 NFPA Fluid Power Vehicle Challenge is off to an exciting start. Coinciding with their senior capstone design courses, fifteen universities have registered to compete in this year’s program.

In the first semester of the Vehicle Challenge, teams gain knowledge in fluid power components, circuits, and systems, and their use in controlling force and motion. They are introduced to the industry judges and mentors, order components from the parts suppliers, and begin planning for the Design and Specification Midway Review.

During this review, students present their initial design and mechanical drawings that illustrate the fluid power control circuits to be created for the vehicle as well as the results from their analysis of fluid flow and expected performance.

University teams are:

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Cleveland State University

Colorado State University

Iowa State University

Kennesaw State University

Montana State University

Murray State University

Purdue Northwest

Purdue University

University of Akron

University of Cincinnati

University of Denver

University of Utah

West Virginia University Inst. of Tech.

Western Michigan University

Judges and mentors are:

Danfoss Power Solutions

FORCE America Inc.

Gates Corp.

HydraForce Inc.

Iowa Fluid Power

Parker Hannifin Corp.

Price Engineering

Trelleborg Sealing Solutions

Woodward Inc.

Program sponsors are:

Bimba Manufacturing - Final competition event host

Eaton Corp. - Parts supplier

LubeTech - Fluid supplier

Parker Hannifin Corp. - Program Sponsor

SunSource - Parts supplier

Source Fluid Power - Parts supplier

Bimba Manufacturing Company, is a gold-level donor in the NFPA Foundation’s Pascal Society. Bimba is a part of IMI Precision Engineering and the competition will be held at the IMI Norgren facility in Littleton, Colorado, in April.

Everyone is talking about the digital transformation of industry. Visitors to the Digital Factory halls at HANNOVER MESSE – running April 1-5, 2019 – can discover the driving forces behind this development. The boom in this sector demonstrates clearly the triumph of Industry 4.0 and networking. The companies in Halls 5, 6, 7 and 8 are developing and supplying the prerequisites for what will be the lead theme of the world's foremost industrial technology show in 2019: Integrated Industry – Industrial Intelligence. This refers to the digital networking of humans and machines in the age of artificial intelligence.

"The companies exhibiting at HANNOVER MESSE's Digital Factory are enabling the digital transformation within industry," says Arno Reich, global director Digital Factory in the HANNOVER MESSE team. "It will then become achievable through the cooperation between automation and industrial IT. The speed of this transformation is illustrated by the growing number of alliances between traditional IT suppliers and industrial groups."

Buyers from the mechanical and plant engineering sectors, the automotive and aerospace industries, the construction, metal, plastics, and processing industries, and from electrical engineering and electronics come to HANNOVER MESSE to pave their way to Industry 4.0 – because no manufacturing company nowadays can afford to ignore pattern recognition, neural networks, machine learning, deep learning, or knowledge-based processing. Artificial intelligence (AI) is therefore one of the keynote themes at HANNOVER MESSE. At Digital Factory, the exhibiting companies showcase solutions that learn autonomously from the enormous volume of digitized production data, are self-optimizing, predict machine downtime and significantly accelerate Industry 4.0 processes.

The platform economy is another topic of major importance. It plays a crucial role in mechanical and plant engineering as a basis for the development of new business models and digital services. This is not just about which IoT solution best connects humans, machines and processes and thus forms the ideal operating system for Industry 4.0. For example, digital platforms provide a very direct benefit by reducing transaction costs and facilitating network effects.

Two other topics will be attracting even more attention in 2019. The first is data analytics. This involves software that uses intelligent data analysis to help industry reduce the consumption of energy and resources and at the same time improve the flexibility, agility and quality of production processes. Data analytics solutions can be found throughout the Digital Factory halls. The second topic is blockchain, which will have its own exhibition area at HANNOVER MESSE. Blockchain can be used to verify contracts, monitor supply chains or protect networked systems in the IoT from cyberattacks and disruptions. Blockchain will be located in Hall 6 in the immediate vicinity of the Industrial Security exhibition area and forum. As the use of artificial intelligence increases, the issues of IT security and data sovereignty are, of course, a significant challenge. Companies can work with data only if it is securely and globally available in the long term.

In addition to blockchain and industrial security, other topics in Halls 5 and 6 include engineering software (CAx, PLM), cloud solutions, platforms and services, virtual reality, and additive manufacturing (AM). Hall 7 will showcase business software with MES, ERP, CRM, and DMS as well as SCM solutions, IT solutions and consulting, and embedded systems. Finally, Hall 8 marks the transition to the Automation area featuring the Industry 4.0 Forum, Industry 4.0 initiatives and political platforms, and the SmartFactory/Intelligent Manufacturing area.

The triumph of Industry 4.0 is only possible because of the forward planning undertaken by entrepreneurs, researchers and politicians. It doesn't stop at Industry 4.0, however. Innovation drivers at HANNOVER MESSE's new Industrial Pioneers Summit will therefore be addressing the question of what comes after Industry 4.0 in a discussion on Tuesday, April 2, 2019. The aim of the conference is to work out forward-looking developments and scenarios for the time when digitization, artificial intelligence, human-machine collaboration and the platform economy have long become a normality.

In addition, the supporting program at HANNOVER MESSE will include a variety of events designed to increase participants' knowledge in specific areas of the digital factory and enabling them to connect with experts. These include the 11th MES Conference for producers and users in the manufacturing and process industry, the CAE Forum on numerical simulation, 3D visualization and additive manufacturing, and the one-day Additive Manufacturing (AM) Symposium focusing on the use of new 3D printing methods in mechanical engineering and on new hardware and materials in additive manufacturing.

Emuge expanding US manufacturing facility

Emuge Corp., a manufacturer of high-performance taps, drills, end mills, and other rotary tools, has recently broken ground to build a 22,000ft2 expansion project that will double the size of its U.S. headquarters and manufacturing facility in West Boylston, Massachusetts. Marking a 35-year presence in the U.S. along with increased growth in North America, the Emuge expansion will include more manufacturing space and the addition of a PVD coating center. In addition, Emuge plans to expand its current Technology and Training Center, also located at the West Boylston facility.

"The expansion will allow us to better serve our customer base in the U.S. and Canada," says Bob Hellinger, president of Emuge Corp. "The growth we have experienced in our aerospace and power generation customer base has been significant in the past few years. The expanded facility will provide additional capacity to manufacture special solid carbide tooling domestically and allow us to provide customized solutions within our milling portfolio.”

Construction for the expanded facility began in September 2018, with completion slated for the second quarter of 2019. A grand opening celebration for the newly expanded Emuge headquarters and manufacturing facility will be announced in 2019.

Emuge currently has tool reconditioning capabilities in West Boylston for taps, end mills, and drills, combined with the ability to manufacture tools such as spot drills, chamfer mills, and make other round tool modifications.

Emuge Corp. is a wholly owned subsidiary of the 1,800+ employee German company EMUGE-Werk Richard Glimpel GmbH & Co. KG (Lauf, Germany) that has been the product technology and performance leader in their field for nearly 100 years. The company manufactures an extensive line of taps, thread mills, drills, end mills, toolholders, clamping devices and other rotary cutting tools ? over 40,000 items sold through distributors worldwide. Emuge also offers end-user technical support through a network of in-the-field engineers and in-house product specialists, all with extensive tooling and application experience.

Bruker to acquire Alicona Imaging GmbH

Billerica, Massachusetts – Bruker Corp. officials announced the signing of an agreement to purchase 100% of the shares of Alicona Imaging GmbH, a leading provider of optical-based metrology products based in Graz, Austria. Alicona's optical 3D metrology products are a perfect complement to Bruker's microCT, stylus profiler, white-light interferometry and atomic force microscope (AFM) product suite. The combined product offering broadens Bruker's application reach and offers customers an even more comprehensive selection of complementary metrology solutions to serve their materials research, engineering and high-precision quality assurance needs. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

"We are excited to add Alicona's unique technologies and strong brand to our set of metrology systems," says Bruker NANO Group President Dr. Mark R. Munch. "Alicona has led the industry in the development of focus variation technology and has delivered high-quality metrology products and manufacturing QA/QC solutions to the market that align nicely with our own products and our strengths in industrial metrology."

"We are very pleased to join Bruker," adds Dr. Stefan Scherer, co-CEO of Alicona. "We have built a strong company that delivers superior measurement solutions in laboratory and production environments, and we are looking forward to leveraging Bruker's global reach to serve an even wider customer base and help expand the Bruker portfolio to a wider set of manufacturing solutions."

"We have focused for 17 years on building the highest quality products and best-matched solutions to our customers' metrology problems," explains Dr. Manfred Prantl, co-CEO of Alicona. "The Alicona InfiniteFocus, µCMM, and collaborative robot products are leading examples of this innovative history that combine nicely into Bruker's growing family of application-enabling technologies."

"Over the last years Alicona has shown an impressive top-line growth and international expansion based on its leading technology," notes Philipp Jacobi, managing partner of Quadriga Capital Eigenkapitalberatung GmbH. "We are glad to have supported Alicona and its management team in such an important growth phase. Over the last 3 years Alicona's staff has almost doubled to over 150 employees and its product portfolio has significantly expanded. With Bruker, Alicona gains a strong industrial research and metrology partner and at the same time a new home, from where the company can continue its international growth plans."